5 ms·

> Yiddish really has nothing to do with Hebrew other than the script and borrowed words which are forced into it. Sort of like Farsi and Arabic. Not really tru

by nanna 8y ago

> Yiddish really has nothing to do with Hebrew other than the script and borrowed words which are forced into it. Sort of like Farsi and Arabic. Not really true. It's a fusion of Germanic, Slavic (and today English and Dutch) with Hebrew and Aramaic. One thing that's amazing about Yiddish is the ability to shift from a secular to sacred level within the same language. The language and the culture is a tension between the two, and the writing of Yiddish expresses this by the fact that it reserves a whole set of letters only for religious words. [Edited to add]: And its Hebrew words are not "forced into it". It's the language of Ashkenazi Jewry who used Hebrew and Aramaic in their day-to-day life too.

verbify 8y ago
There's a Yiddish joke that illustrates the extent that Yiddish has a borrowed vocabulary. A Rabbi is at an event with the Kaiser. The Kaiser says to him 'Sprichst du Deutsch' - 'do you speak German?'. The Rabbi replies confidently 'avadah, iz doch unserer mama loshon' - 'certainly, it's our mother tongue'. The joke being that 'avadah' (certainly) is Aramaic, and 'loshon' (tongue) is Hebrew, so all the Kaiser would understand is 'gibberish our mother gibberish'.
onyva 8y ago
To be accurate, Ashkenazi jews don’t speak Yiddish they speak German. There was a cultural disconnect between these two groups themselves. The term oestjuden for example was used pejoratively. It’s fascinating still to read, for example, Hertzl’s (Sephardi on his fathers’s side) commentary about this specific issue. It’s not just the language barrier of course, but secularization, education etc. The term “ashkenazi” refers to tradition (reading of the Bible in, customs etc.) but they’re still two different groups, and even more so when you speak about Hasidim. In Israel at least they’re still uneducated and very poor (living of donations, subsidies, not sharing civil burdens etc.) very much like they lived in the Pale of Settlement (Poland, Ukraine...) in the Russian empire until the early 20th century.
- nanna 8y ago
  > It’s fascinating still to read, for example, Hertzl’s (Sephardi on his fathers’s side) commentary about this specific issue. I personally wouldn't take my source of knowledge about Yiddish from father of the movement whose whole ambition was to abandon the Yiddish world. > To be accurate, Ashkenazi jews don’t speak Yiddish they speak German. There was a cultural disconnect between these two groups themselves. The term oestjuden for example was used pejoratively. Sorry but this is plain wrong again. A fusion language of German and Judeo-Semitic languages emerged from around the region of Germany at some point, the earliest writings of which are dated about a thousand years ago. This language spread and came to be known as Yiddish. The 18C Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and Moses Mendelsohn in particular derided this Germanic 'jargon'. Where the Haskalah spread in Central and Western Europe, Ashkenazi Jews abandoned Yiddish for the major languages of their hosts - eg High German, French. In the east, especially Poland, where Jews tended to be much poorer and derided by the rich Jews to their west as 'Ostjuden', Yiddish remained the language of Ashkenazi Jewish community. and so it was until the Khurbn (Holocaust/Shoah), Stalin's post-War liquidation of Yiddish intellectuals and the State of Israel's only recently relaxed hostility to the language and culture. Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to America eventually felt the need to abandon the language too. And that's how a language almost died. Except it didn't, because religious (Haredi) Jews, who represented a small minority of Jews pre-WWII, had too much at stake in Yiddish - commentaries, writings, the Tzenereneh, teachings - and didn't feel the same need to assimilate as secular Jews. So today the vast majority of Yiddish speakers across the world come from the religious tradition, including the one Israel.
  - onyva 8y ago
    Eastern-European, not Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi is associated with German, secular Jews, emancipated and mostly assimilated already by the end of the 19th century. Eastern-Europeans are neither of that and BTW, using religious study as "education" is misleading. In the modern world Hasidim and Haredim are not very different from the Taliban (including their objection to education of girls). There are exceptions of course, but the general attitude is very hostile to the idea of modernity in every aspect. Before you talk about "terroism" and the Taliban, allow me to remind you that Eastern-European Jews are very central to the fascist "revival" in Israel (some of their "leaders" are imports from the USA and Russia)... from Meir Khanh in the 80s, to Baruch Goldstein and the horribleness of whatever is growing in the Settlements in the occupied territories these days.
onyva 8y ago
Semitic languages have a root and pattern system which is central to the language and does not exist in Yiddish, that's why it's "forced". The Aramaic is of course a central connecting element in all these languages, including Arabic.
- azernik 8y ago
  Loanwords Are A Normal Thing In Languages.

by nanna 8y ago

verbify 8y ago

There's a Yiddish joke that illustrates the extent that Yiddish has a borrowed vocabulary. A Rabbi is at an event with the Kaiser. The Kaiser says to him 'Sprichst du Deutsch' - 'do you speak German?'. The Rabbi replies confidently 'avadah, iz doch unserer mama loshon' - 'certainly, it's our mother tongue'. The joke being that 'avadah' (certainly) is Aramaic, and 'loshon' (tongue) is Hebrew, so all the Kaiser would understand is 'gibberish our mother gibberish'.

onyva 8y ago

To be accurate, Ashkenazi jews don’t speak Yiddish they speak German. There was a cultural disconnect between these two groups themselves. The term oestjuden for example was used pejoratively. It’s fascinating still to read, for example, Hertzl’s (Sephardi on his fathers’s side) commentary about this specific issue. It’s not just the language barrier of course, but secularization, education etc. The term “ashkenazi” refers to tradition (reading of the Bible in, customs etc.) but they’re still two different groups, and even more so when you speak about Hasidim. In Israel at least they’re still uneducated and very poor (living of donations, subsidies, not sharing civil burdens etc.) very much like they lived in the Pale of Settlement (Poland, Ukraine...) in the Russian empire until the early 20th century.

nanna 8y ago
> It’s fascinating still to read, for example, Hertzl’s (Sephardi on his fathers’s side) commentary about this specific issue. I personally wouldn't take my source of knowledge about Yiddish from father of the movement whose whole ambition was to abandon the Yiddish world. > To be accurate, Ashkenazi jews don’t speak Yiddish they speak German. There was a cultural disconnect between these two groups themselves. The term oestjuden for example was used pejoratively. Sorry but this is plain wrong again. A fusion language of German and Judeo-Semitic languages emerged from around the region of Germany at some point, the earliest writings of which are dated about a thousand years ago. This language spread and came to be known as Yiddish. The 18C Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and Moses Mendelsohn in particular derided this Germanic 'jargon'. Where the Haskalah spread in Central and Western Europe, Ashkenazi Jews abandoned Yiddish for the major languages of their hosts - eg High German, French. In the east, especially Poland, where Jews tended to be much poorer and derided by the rich Jews to their west as 'Ostjuden', Yiddish remained the language of Ashkenazi Jewish community. and so it was until the Khurbn (Holocaust/Shoah), Stalin's post-War liquidation of Yiddish intellectuals and the State of Israel's only recently relaxed hostility to the language and culture. Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to America eventually felt the need to abandon the language too. And that's how a language almost died. Except it didn't, because religious (Haredi) Jews, who represented a small minority of Jews pre-WWII, had too much at stake in Yiddish - commentaries, writings, the Tzenereneh, teachings - and didn't feel the same need to assimilate as secular Jews. So today the vast majority of Yiddish speakers across the world come from the religious tradition, including the one Israel.
- onyva 8y ago
  Eastern-European, not Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi is associated with German, secular Jews, emancipated and mostly assimilated already by the end of the 19th century. Eastern-Europeans are neither of that and BTW, using religious study as "education" is misleading. In the modern world Hasidim and Haredim are not very different from the Taliban (including their objection to education of girls). There are exceptions of course, but the general attitude is very hostile to the idea of modernity in every aspect. Before you talk about "terroism" and the Taliban, allow me to remind you that Eastern-European Jews are very central to the fascist "revival" in Israel (some of their "leaders" are imports from the USA and Russia)... from Meir Khanh in the 80s, to Baruch Goldstein and the horribleness of whatever is growing in the Settlements in the occupied territories these days.

onyva 8y ago

Semitic languages have a root and pattern system which is central to the language and does not exist in Yiddish, that's why it's "forced". The Aramaic is of course a central connecting element in all these languages, including Arabic.

azernik 8y ago
Loanwords Are A Normal Thing In Languages.